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He's pretty much to the 90's what Andre was to the 70's or Hansen to the 80's in terms of being a special attraction that could be plugged into the main event virtually anywhere. Maybe the last great special attraction wrestler ever after the 2000's WWE monopoly and the Japan scene collapse made it much harder for guys to have careers like that.

Well that's some pretty shitty news to wake up to. He's always been one of my favorites. He was great pretty much everywhere he went. Even the WWF run has some gems.

Enzo

Most people who do a lot of reviews pretty quickly find out that the ratings are the least important part of the review, hence why a lot of the most prolific reviewers here forego the ratings entirely.. Reviews give us a chance to analyse why guys would choose to work in a particular way and what makes a match great (or not so great), and they also serve as a memento of how a match made you feel on a particular viewing. Even the people who do rate everything generally do so just to help organize their thoughts rather than viewing it as some be-all-end-all. When I look at ratings it's generally to see what's worth viewing, and I generally don't care too much about how people rate stuff I've already seen recently. I don't think anyone here watches just to give ratings.

I think I'm in a middle ground between the idea of this as a ***** match and the people here who shit on it, leaning more towards the camp of it being a great match. I will admit that this is movez wrestling, but I don't have much of an issue with movez wrestling as long as it doesn't drag and they don't try to build any pretensions about it being more than that. This is pretty much a textbook example of high-octane testosterone-fueled workrate, employing constant motion even when they're just working basic headlocks. When you consider the way the feud had been built with them as the best workrate guys in the company in a perpetual quest to outdo each other, it almost feels like the idea behind this match is to find some way to transmute the concept of character work into workrate. Both guys go at each other super aggressively for the match's duration. There's some brief moments of disrespect like Angle targeting Benoit's injured neck area or Benoit blowing his nose on Angle, but you always feel they're so hell bent on out-striking, out-suplexing, and submitting each other that the match is never in any danger of degenerating into a brawl. I've seen people criticize the way that this match escalates, with them smoothly going from basic holds -> strikes -> suplexes -> submissions without really ever looking back to a prior phase, but they do it all with such conviction and intensity that it felt like there was no other way for this match to go. As long as you don't go in expecting deep psychology, it's a really fun way to spend 20 minutes. **** FWIW, my favorite moment was that look of wearied satisfaction on Benoit's face after he hit that over-the-head release suplex late in the match.

Rewatched this to make sure I wasn't imagining when I found myself watching other matches and comparing them negatively. Turns out I wasn't overrating this at all and it's still a masterpiece of storytelling and character work on rewatch. I actually don't think I did it justice with my first review. I hit on the basic points, but there's so many great little details you have to watch to appreciate. I think a lot of it even went over the heads of the crowd as they're dead until the big suplexes near the end, but fuck them this is an amazing match. Besides the surface storytelling, these guys are just incredible with how they work struggle into the spots and use it to enhance the story. It's not often that I watch a match and think someone did a great acting job, but that's exactly how I felt about Kawada's performance here. The guy showed a full spectrum of emotions. There's the initial hubris of trying to do shoot-style stand-up, the doubt after the first suplex, the primal scream of pain during the armbar, the arrogance when he has Albright reeling with his kicks, and the final acts of desperation. Those last few minutes where Albright destroys Kawada are amazing. It's like watching King Kong play with the T-Rex's broken jaw. Especially love how Kawada rolling out of the way of a knee drop just made Albright angier and led to him killing him with a hard Dragon Suplex. THIS is how you make a guy look a beast. One of the best 12 minute matches I've ever seen and really deserves to be mentioned alongside their 1995 match. ****1/2

Really appreciate that reply. I actually was writing that review because there was a lot of stuff I didn't understand and was curious about, so it's great to have someone break things down like that. Definitely gonna rewatch this one eventually.

I remember it being mentioned before that the idea of lucha as some alien style comes from over-thinking things and the best way to get into it is to watch it as you would any other style. As I work my way through these pimped lucha matches I find myself agreeing with that sentiment. It has its quirks just like any other style. The holds are wackier, the strikes are softer, and the guys take rolling bumps, but it's still pro wrestling at the end the day. All that said, comparing this to Flair/Steamboat is nuts. I will give these guys credit that they worked something resembling a 70's US title match and avoided the masturbatory catch-and-release shit that I often see with these title matches. But I just didn't see much rhyme or reason to it. Why are some holds treated as instant tap-outs while others are ones guys can fight through? Why was Dandy using a headlock at the mid-point of the match after he was already down a fall? The sort of strategy and progression from feeling out type stuff into match ending attempts that I normally look for when I watch matwork just wasn't there. The first two falls felt like them spending 15 minutes doing feeling out shit while they just so happened to trade pinfalls along the way. I will admit that they built some cool moments in the third fall between the attack on Dandy's shoulder and Warrior's leg selling from later. But those were just moments. Trying to make sense of them in the context of the rest of the match made them feel flat. At first it was cool with Warrior finding Dandy's weak spot when he hit that top rope move on Dandy's shoulder, as well as for Dandy to follow it up with by going to town on Warrior's own arm. And then Dandy just dropped it and did a figure four. Why? Warrior reached the ropes, but Dandy refused to break the hold and it took the ref forever to get them apart. Again, why? I would have been willing to just go along with it if it was actually treated as a big thing in the match, but instead we got this weird thing where Warrior sells the legs for a bit but ultimately has no issue running around and hitting top rope moves when he needs to do it. It reminded me of Hayashi/Kondo 2006 in that they wanted to get some leg selling just for the hell of it but weren't gonna let it stop them from getting their high spots in. I will give them credit for building to some impressive spots and even a few dramatic near falls, but I struggle to understand what the psychology at play here. ***

I want to take a moment to note what a great feel good moment this match is. In ECW's old stomping grounds of Philadelphia, Eddie and Super Crazy stepped aside to let these 3 young guys go out in the main event of the beginning of the ROH experiment and the biggest indy show since ECW closed almost exactly one year ago. And they tore the house down with a breathtaking display of athleticism, receiving standing ovations from the crowd at various points of the match. As has been noted, the main strength of this match is how these guys go all-out from the opening bell with nothing resembling down-time or a botch to be found. There's way too many great spots to list, many of which are just as amazing to watch today as they were all those years ago when this match took place. The most spectacular of which happened near the end, when Low-Ki hit a beautiful phoenix splash on Danielson while he had Daniels in a Cattle Mutilation. I'd always heard this described as a spot-fest, but there was a surprising amount of structure to be found. Ki was the Kung-Fu master with the world's hardest kicks, Danielson, was the submissions guy trying to prove he could kick as hard as Ki, and Daniels was the dark horse. It was more or less built around Ki and Danielson trying to one-up each-other while Danielson's role varied between that of a punching bag and a spoiler. The one big problem I had with this match was the lack of escalation. As impressive as it was what these guys did, there's not much room to accelerate when you're going max speed right from the start and never slow down. I felt it hurt the drama that they just kept throwing out spots at lightning speed up to the closing bell with no one slowing down. If it makes sense, when Ki won the match it just felt like he hit a move that happened to have been what they planned as the finish rather than something that was organically built up. Despite all that, this is still an incredible match that's aged amazingly well and really something every fan should watch at some point. A very important match that delivered in spades. ****1/4

That great feel when you discover a new classic from one of your favorite wrestlers. Kawada is the god of detail work and I challenge anyone who disagrees to watch this match. It's simply laid out perfectly to play to each of their strengths and weaknesses. Kawada might have won their match a year prior, but he's still done his studying for this one as he shows with the shoot-style stand-up opening of this match. I love how he sells his leg when Albright checks his leg kick attempts. Probably unintentional, but it kind of has the feel of a 1920's match with how they keep returning to the Greco-Roman lock-up. The opening is a textbook study of how to build up tension in a match. It's beautiful when Albright finally explodes like a volcano on Kawada with some high speed suplexes in quick succession. Kawada finds a brief respite with a hard kick to Albright's head, but he seems to realize that it's pretty risky to try to stand with Albright with how quick he can roll off those suplexes. The match takes a turn towards the mat, and it's here that match's brilliance really starts to show. I really enjoy watching Kawada on the mat, but I'll admit he didn't have the same sort of technical prowess or explosiveness to hang with a truly accomplished grappler, but they play that off here with Albright mostly gobbling up Kawada's attempts to hang on the mat. Albright gets sweet revenge for last year's match when he hangs onto an armbar even after Kawada scores a rope-break and fucks up Kawada's arm. Kawada has to be crafty and persistent to get advantage on the mat. He gets his own sloppy armbar on and Albright goes for a lazy rope-break, which turns out to be a big mistake as Kawada just keeps it on to get revenge for Albright's revenge spot from earlier. From here, Kawada seems to have Albright reeling and capitalizes by laying on the kicks. He seems to get a bit arrogant, though, and Albright finds an opening to score a sick German, which he then follows up with a dragon suplex. Kawada tries to go for a desperation take-down to stifle Albright, but it's for nought as Albright maintains the upper-hand and makes a statement by submitting Kawada with a sleeper. ****1/4 Match is only 12 minutes, but what a great story these guys tell in the time and I'm sure there's a few things I forgot here. A worthy sequel to their match a year prior.

I find the *****1/2 rating for the BOSJ final just as suspect as the Okada/Omega 7 stars business. If he has now presumably reigned in going over the scale as a regular fixture of his ratings, it does make it difficult to fully grasp what a ****3/4 match might really mean compared to when he held back. I imagine this might give him some publicity in the short, but it seems long-term it's gonna hurt the staying power of his newer ratings quite a bit. I will say that might be exactly what he wants. When I had a subscription 10 years ago I remember him being dumbfounded on the board when people would treat the ratings as the main thing to look at on the older issues rather than the news that he covered.

The 3 people nominating matches is something that I'll agree seems nice on paper, but in practice I don't think it's really paid off. It seems like most of the posts have ended up being people 2nding or 3rding matches just to make them eligible for voting, while you wouldn't have any sort of worries like that play a factor at all if all that was necessary was to have 1 person nominate a match.

I feel kind of bad comparing this to a completely different match that happened to have been on the same show, but when I was watching this I couldn't help but think, "How can anyone think this is better than Punk/Lesnar?" Just look at the video packages. Punk/Lesnar had this great story about a former trying to get revenge on a friend who betrayed him by taking down an unstoppable monster. Here we get a strange beard storyline with some referee shenanigans. The match also doesn't suddenly grab you like Punk/Lesnar, instead slowly really slowly as they play up Cena's injured elbow. He goes out and gets it checked by the doctor and then works a headlock using it to show he's fine and that's about the last time it's made out as serious factor. It feels like Chekhov's gun that they'd make a big deal out of it in the beginning just for it to become a non-factor as the match gets going. Anyway, they work some nice submissions stuff from there. I appreciate Cena really going out of his way to sell the surfboard as a serious move to avoid. They also kind of establish the dynamic of Bryan finding ways to stop Cena from doing his usual stuff with his unique style, which forces Cena to rely more on powering through things. I do think the match was built too much on big moves and near falls for my tastes, though the style seemed to work for the crowd. That piledriver thing Cena did off the top rope and the transition into the STF looked sick. I enjoyed the finish run, though it kind of felt like they were aping HBK/Taker with the yay-boo strike exchanges and spot where they used each other's bodies to get up. Neat post-match. I'm in the camp it probably would have been a better moment to have Bryan kick out of the pedigree like how Cena kicked out the first spear during Edge's NYR cash-in, but I can see the argument for why he didn't. Not a classic, but a great WWE moment and main event. ****

Feels so weird to watch to watch this after years of following Punk's failed MMA aspirations and Brock's Suplex City gimmick. As weird as it sounds, I actually think, based on this match, that Brock's character after he started the Suplex City thing is actually much more interesting and well developed than how he is here. I kept waiting for that moment when Brock just cut loose and brutalized Punk with stiff shots, but it never really happened. It kind of feels like they try a lot of different approaches without fully sticking with any of them. First you get big vs small, then wrestler vs. shooter, and then it's about Punk going after the evil manager. It's an entertaining match, but I think it could have been something a lot more if they had fully explored one of those themes rather than glazing over all of them. For example, the part where Punk reversing Kimura into an armbar might seem like a great spot on paper to get across Punk as a threat on the mat, but in practice it was just a small spot and soon got overshadowed when Lesnar manages to score a powerbomb a few minutes later. The match also lacks the spontaneity that really sets Brock's newer matches. I thought that Punk's comebacks should have felt more earned, and the cut-offs from Lesnar (Punk gets distracted by Heyman, Punk gets caught off a top rope move, Punk gets powerbombed from a triangle attempt) were all predictable from a mile away. All that said, these guys must have been doing something right to keep me entertained the whole way through a match of this length. Even pre-Suplex City, Lesnar is a joy to watch for the explosiveness and brutality with which he can imbue the most basic of moves. I loved how he made something like a bear hug look brutal. His rendition of Three Amigos later in the match would have made Eddie proud. His verbal taunts were great stuff as well. Punk also sold well from underneath and his kicks looked great. A great match, but I wouldn't call it Lesnar's best nor a true MOTYC. It's kind of like a popcorn movie. You can nitpick over how it could be smarter but there's enough explosions that you end up happy anyway. ****14

Let's not kid ourselves here. Tons of wrestlers have been shown to have had CTE, even guys who didn't wrestle anything resembling a dangerous or hard-hitting style. I'd argue UFC seems pretty caring about keeping Punk safe with how White blasted Jackson for prolonging the beating rather than trying to finish the fight early.

I'm disappointed no one has brought up the intergender route. NJPW bringing in women just to run a showcase match would be boring and not really do much for women's wrestling, but an all-star intergender tag or singles feud is something I can get on board with. Easily the most I've been interested in joshi was when Kana was booking herself against shoot-style male wrestlers.

I guess I would qualify as someone who grew up with 90's AJPW. King's Road is the most popular style in the world right now. I don't know about DG with its lucharesu thing, but NJPW, DDT, AJPW, NOAH, and BJW all have clearly styled their big matches after it. It's also had a big influence on US Super Indys and WWE. I also hear there's a big movement among European indies to incorporate it under the erroneous name of "strong style." Not much reason to be resentful about the current scene when nearly every name promotion outside of Mexico seems to be catering its product towards fans of 90's AJPW. If I speak out against newer stuff it's simply because I don't think it's as good as the best of 90's AJPW. Also, I don't think Lawler/Funk was so great it deserved to blow the roof off the 4 star scale, but what's done is done and the 5 star scale is so firmly entrenched that anyone saying a match can blow the roof off of it just looks silly.

Who said anything about money? I said career longevity. Yes, money (and the more important part here, security) is part of that, but not all of it. It sure as hell beats prostituting himself in high school gyms for $50 a shot like a weathered old gigolo, which is probably what he's doing now. "The Wrestler," anyone? Sabu made his choice, he cared more about something else than money and career longevity. Who are you to tell him he made the wrong choice? Do you know if he's happy or not happy right now with his life? In his KC Breaking Kayfabe interview from a year or so ago he seemed pretty despondent. When asked if he thought he stayed around too ling he said "probably" and in the interview he did in the UK about being offered the WWF role as Sultan he seemed to acknowledge he probably should've taken it in hindsight. I don't think Sabu thinks he can't survive the consequences of his choices but he does certainly seem to be more accepting to admit he shouldn't have made some of the choices he did. Which is completely his right. I just hate the notion that somebody automatically made the wrong choice because they turned dome some money or career opportunity. Everybody has different goals and needs in life. You realize you could use your same logic of "it's fine if it makes them happy" argument to deny getting help for drug users who deny there's a problem, right? Besides that, wrestling, just like boxing and MMA, is a very physically demanding activity that carries with it quite a few consequences that aren't obvious until it's too late. It is a pretty well documented problem that quite a few old timers didn't learn how to manage money and stuck around too long. I don't think I've seen anyone forced to stick around glad that they passed off the opportunity to leave with a truckload of money and their heath, or people who did get out early who regret they didn't get to live like Randy "The Ram" Robinson.

The point underlying all this is it's very easy to get swept up in the moment and say something that might seem baffling in a few years when a promotion you care about has a great match. Everyone does it and Dave is just an easy punching bag for it since he's been covering current stuff the longest. Trying to figure out what matches are gonna stand the test of time is only marginally easier than trying to figure out what stocks are be big players a few years from now.

BIt of a difficult match to rate. I'll start with my criticisms. This follows a very simple and predictable formula. The match starts out with a face (Dusty Rhodes) dominating a heel (Arn Anderson). Then a heel (Tully Blanchard) comes in and turns the tables until another face (Animal) comes in and the faces go back to dominating. Repeat that until everyone is in and it's time to go to the finish. I just described the entire match. As a viewer watching 30 years of later, I really would have liked to have seen them change things up just a little bit, like having the heels somehow manage to keep the advantage even when it's even or for the faces to try to stay in control even when they're outnumbered. Also, the work is mostly confined to basic brawling. Dusty gets Arn in the figure four in the beginning and then the heels work over Dusty's leg later for a bit of revenge, but those are just short sections that get forgotten as the whole thing just kind of becomes a clusterfuck as more guys go in there. Ross goes crazy on commentary about how brutal it all is, but I didn't really notice anything that stood out as particularly special. The match is lacking a hook or really much psychology at all beyond what I described about the faces dominating when it's even and heels dominating when they have the number advantage. Even the blood seems like it's there mostly to give the Apter mags an opportunity to take some good photos. Also, the finish feels a bit flat. I'd have liked something a bit more decisive than the Road Warriors singling out Dillon while the other Horsemen were distracted fighting the other faces. All that goes out the window if we're just talking about the crowd heat. They were going crazy straight from the beginning and never really settled down. Crockett took a risk pulling out a convoluted gimmick like this, but they definitely managed to make it work with their audience. In that respect, the predictable layout actually works in the match's favor by making it easier to follow for the fans by giving them something familiar they could bite into. They knew that the faces would win in a fair fight and that the heels can only keep up when they have some kind of advantage, and that was what they got here. The result is one of the most fondly remembered matches in the company's history and one that launched a signature gimmick for WCW. In spite of all the flaws I listed above, I still never really found myself bored with the work for much of the match's 20 minute length largely because it's such a spectacle to listen to the crowd and commentators reacting to this as they did. It's difficult to rate because there is such a seeming disconnect between the crowd heat and the match's grander influence with the actual quality of the work. I'm tempted to say it's not really meant for critical analysis. You're best off just letting yourself be hypnotized by the crowd heat and the easy to follow layout. Turn on, tune in, drop out. ***1/2

Real men get Youtube links from the source code.

A Youtube video of the match is literally the first result that shows up on Google. Really good match to get Bull over, by the way. *1/2 is bullshit.

Here's my match for Matt D. It's El Santo's retirement match. Always thought it deserved to be talked up more by the lucha fans here. https://youtu.be/uQn8WXymIVo Don't let the length scare you. Match doesn't begin until 34 minutes in and the stuff before that is just interviews and him posing for photos.

My match was Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart 5/20/1994 https://youtu.be/u0ukrtoIOV4